Adolescent Development
& Outdoor Education in Schools

Adolescent Development & Outdoor Education in Schools

Adolescents of today are ill-prepared for tomorrow. The responsibility for
providing developmental experiences for adolescents has increasingly been
placed on schools. Outdoor education offers an innovative approach to
helping develop students develop their self-concepts, attitudes, and
personal effectiveness.

Empirical evidence has indicated, and theory suggests,
that outdoor education programs are comparable in their outcomes with other
forms of innovative classroom-based affective education, and have the
potential to be even more impactful. Innovative experimentations are
needed with outdoor education as a method for helping to guide adolescents
into successful adulthoods in the twenty-first century.

Traditionally, adolescent identity development was
facilitated via culturally-guided rites of passage involving physical and
spiritual challenges. However, in modern Western society, there is
a lack of such experiences available for young people.

Problem-behaviours such as delinquency and drug-abuse can
be seen as natural risk-taking behaviours through which adolescents seek to
explore their potential. Well-known behavioural problems and the
disturbing prevalence of adolescent psychopathology and psychological
distress can be seen as symptomatic of young people do not feel adequately
equipped to cope with the task of adulthood in the twenty-first century.

More recent forms of experiential identity development for adolescents have included
military training, community service, religious practice, and apprenticeships. Increasingly,
however, such developmental roles are less available. How, then, are
we expecting young people to 'cut their teeth' on the world and forge for
themselves a strong sense of personal identity and capabilities for handling
the twenty-first century?

Over the past century, the responsibility for providing meaningful
developmental experiences for young people has increasingly been placed on
schools. Schools have become the mass training ground for children and
youth in Western society and, increasingly, are being seen as intervention
sites for primary and secondary prevention programs.

Unlike the relatively uniform academic curricula in mainstream schooling, the degree
of emphasis on, and methodology of, approaches to personal, social and
community development of students
varies substantially between schools.

The
mainstream education system is often criticized for having lost touch with
the inner and future needs of adolescents. In responding though, there is a
temptation to only respond to the most immediate, acute needs, such as
suicide and drug-abuse. However, more than ever we need preventative
efforts which foster a secure sense of self and allow adolescents to develop
a flexible repertoire of skills for navigating and creating their future.

One way
in which our society has responded to the call for education of the whole
person is by including personal and/or character development as part of the
school curriculum, such as through classes focused citizenship, health and
physical education, religious studies, etc.

A second way is by offering
extracurricular activities (such as school plays, sporting activities,
camps, etc.) as a companion to the mainstream curriculum.

A third way has
been to adjust the whole curriculum and focus of a school to reflect a
primary goal of providing personal development for students, such as in
Steiner and Montessori schools.

One form
of prevention program which is becoming increasingly utilized is outdoor
education. The outdoor adventure-based education approach provides
structured, group-based adventurous challenges, using involving living and
expeditioning in the outdoors.

Activities often include camping, hiking,
rafting, abseiling, and rockclimbing, but with a special focus on
facilitating social, emotional, and intellectual growth. Empirical
evidence has indicated that outdoor education programs are at least as
effective as innovative classroom based personal development programs
(Neill, 1997, 2002,
2003).

The
underlying philosophy of adventure education programs is that of ‘guided
experiential learning’, in which adolescents have direct experiences of
challenge and nature, whilst accompanied by a teacher who uses experiential
learning methods. At their best, outdoor education programs can provide
adolescents with effective rites of passage in developing skills for life.

Some features of effective school-based primary prevention programs which
can be recommended are that the program:

be physically oriented,

use the school context, but outside of the immediate school environment,

take place in a residential setting,

be of a long duration,

be conducted by therapists or trained group leaders,

incorporate the aims of adolescents, parents and teachers, and

include teachers, parents and others involved with adolescents as targets in the program (Neill, 1994).

Although such lists can be created, it important to remain open to a wide
variety of ways in which we can better guide today’s adolescents towards
effective adulthoods. The only sensible way forward is an innovative
approach, with active cycles of experimentation and evaluation with
promising methods, such as outdoor education.

Quay, J., Dickinson, S., & Nettleton, B. (2000).
Students caring for each other: Community building focusing on the student-student relationship. Paper presented to Community Building in a Global Context Conference, September
9-12, Hobart, Australia.